I can’t take credit for this. Catholic Memes is a funny site, though. You should check it out.

Hi there. I’ve decided to start a new series on my blog!

I know what you’re thinking: Luke? Blogging again? When did this happen? Why did this happen? Hasn’t the world suffered enough???

Answers: yes, yes, just now, why not?, and no.

The truth is, I never really stopped blogging. It’s been nine months, but I never officially quit. I was just waiting for an idea good enough that it was worth doing some unpaid writing for. And I got one. So I’m back.

There’s an old xkcd comic where writer Randall Munroe theorizes that the supposedly “random” things that Internet culture finds hilarious — e.g.: pirate zombie ninja monkey penguin!!! etc. — can be explained entirely in terms of metrical feet: every damn one of them is a trochee, which if you slept through English class, is a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (PI-rate, ZOM-bie, etc.). Ignoring for a moment that probably half the nouns in English are trochees, this actually sort-of makes sense. English is naturally iambic (unstressed-stressed), so reversing this has an “unsettling” effect, and — depending on how they’re handled — unsettling things are either funny or frightening (or both). It’s why Poe wrote “The Raven” in trochees, and it’s why all five lines in a limerick open with trochees. And apparently, it’s why everyone on the Internet thinks pirates and zombies are hilarious.

CAPTION CAPTION CAPTION!!!

Given this, it was only a matter of time before my generation — the Lazy, Entitled Millennials™, the first to be raised on the Internet — grew up, started writing books, and started inserting pirates and zombies into them in an attempt to be hilarious. And since there’s already a pirate version of the Bible — one that launched an entire religion, no less — it was inevitable that we would get a zombie Bible as well. The potential should be obvious: think of how different the Bible would be if all the characters were zombies!

Unfortunately, the answer turns out to be: hardly different at all. Continue reading

I thought I should post something for all the people who have followed this blog and then realized that I haven’t posted anything since, like, October.

I’ll be honest. The blog has been low-priority for me of late. But it’s not because I’m not writing! You can still enjoy the words I make up in many places around the Internet!

My top priority these days is the weekly column I write for Christ and Pop Culture, LOL Interwebz. That’s right, you can read my uniquely dick-jokey and Jesus-jukey take on Internet culture, every single week! Here are some of the better recent ones:

And I’m still an occasional presence over at Cracked. Here’s an article I was blessed with the opportunity to write about Nick Yarris, one of the first death row inmates in the U.S. to ever be exonerated by DNA evidence.

I’m also pleased to announce that I finally scratched the biggest writing itch that was distracting me from this blog — I finally finished my debut horror novel, Ophelia, Alive (A Ghost Story)! Stay tuned to learn when and how you can read it! (I’m not sure about the “when,” but the “how” will probably somehow involve the blood of your firstborn.)

In any case, this blog will still continue indefinitely as the repository for all my thoughts about Jesus, pop culture, butts, and everything in between. So have a happy new year, and a blessed Epiphany, and keep checking in.

There’s been no shortage of sex abuse scandals in the Christian Church in recent years. By now the Catholic Church scandals are old news, but Protestants have rushed to get in on the action in the last year or three as well, with allegations against dozens of institutions coming to light. Bill Gothard of the respected (by some) Institute for Biblical Life Principles recently resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment, and numerous damning exposés have been written on the entrenched rape culture — where victims are blamed and perpetrators walk free — at universities like Bob Jones and Patrick Henry.

I recently found myself, at the recommendation of my pastor, reading a collection of short stories by Robert Shearman entitled Remember Why You Fear Me.It was a collection of all things weird and macabre, sort of like what you might expect from a contemporary British Poe, albeit with a bit of a mildly blasphemous streak.

Toward the end of the ebook version (not the print version) is a short story entitled Tiny Deaths, which opens with Jesus’ death on the cross. In this interpretation, he hears the Father’s voice from heaven while he’s hanging there, asking him if he’s sure he wants to go through with the plan. He assents one last time, and breathes his final breath. This is followed by a resurrection…of sorts: Continue reading

Artist’s representation of everyone on the Internet following the Hobby Lobby ruling

Hey, remember when everyone’s head exploded on the Internet over the Hobby Lobby ruling? That was fun, right?

I’m not here to take sides in the debate, but I will go ahead and say that every argument I’ve seen and heard about it has been really, really stupid. I don’t feel like I have much to add to the debate, so I’m not going to harp on it any more. (My original thoughts can be found here; the TLDR version is that I think the debate is a terrible question that gives birth to many terrible answers, but if I had to pick a side in the idiocy, I’d probably agree with the Court, since I don’t think the mandate clearly satisfies the standard set by the RFRA.)

O RLY?

What I do want to talk about is this concept of “rights” we’re all throwing around. It occurs to me that when America’s “conservatives” (who are actually not conservatives at all, but in fact classical liberals, but whatever, fine, words mean nothing, call yourselves conservatives if you want) talk about “rights,” they mean something very different than “liberals” (who are actually…y’know, I’m not really sure, but “progressives” is probably a better word) do. This may not be news to anyone, necessarily, but it certainly explains the head-slapping stupidity that results from arguments over whether corporations have the “right” to freedom of religion and whether women have the “right” to free birth control [of any sort]. Continue reading

It occurs to me that I’m in possession of a really, really unpopular opinion. And there’s nothing the blogosphere loves more than unpopular opinions. So here goes:

I’m not that big a fan of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

(Please don’t hurt me!)

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not much of a trekkie. It’s my wife who loves the Trek, and since she refuses to give Star Wars a chance, I find myself watching all them star tracks over and over again. And they’re mostly good. I’m not saying they’re bad.

I just don’t see how Khan is the best one, even though everybody says it is. There are something like half a dozen Trek movies that hold up better.

That’s all I’m saying.

Do you want to see my personal ranking of all 12 films? Would that help?

You do? It would?

Oh, thank you! You’re so good to me, imaginary reader I’m talking to! Here’s how it breaks down for me: Continue reading

My non-fiction debut, HOLY SH*T! The Dirtiest Bits in the Bible, is in the works.

Things are a little slow on my blog these days, because people keep giving me paid writing gigs. (I know, weird, right?) Still, I keep it around for those moments when I feel like writing something that no one else would ever publish. Like, for instance, stuff about papal encyclicals and terrible horror movies.

I dream of a day when all will be made new, and when everything will taste like beer. Seriously, someone get on that.